New Leak Suggests a New iPad Mini to Launch Next Week (video)

The bloggers who got their hands on the shell of a new iPad yesterday are back again with a new video. This time around they have what may or may not be a new iPad mini.

They report that aside from one minor cosmetic difference it looks identical to the current iPad Mini, and that presents something of a problem. Since they don't show us the interior for all we know this is could be a current iPad Mini with a production quirk.

But if this really is the new iPad Mini then it probably means that it will have a Retina display if or when it is revealed next week. Assuming Apple follows their past behavior then the screen resolution will be 2048 x 1536.

That will give the new iPad Mini one of the sharpest 7" (ish) screens on the market with a resolution of 326 dpi. That will compare well with the current Nexus 7, whose 1200x1920 screen resolution offers a 323 dpi.

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Nate Hoffelder

Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader: He's here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.

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8 Comments

Name5 September, 2013

My first thought was that this looks like one of the Chinese iPad mini clones. If there will be a new iPad mini with 2048×1536, that would be great, since it would mean Chinese Android devices with that same screen and design. Tempting.

Just search for “7.85” on Aliexpress and you’ll find a number of clones. The specs in the ads are often bad and incorrect, though, so you must double-check them. The devil is also often in the details like battery capacity, 5-point versus 10-point multitouch, thickness or weight of the devices and somesuch. The other specs are usually better that those of the iPad mini. The iPad mini still seems to be the thinnest of its kind but maybe I just haven’t found a clone as thin as it or the merchants got their specs wrong (and let me repeat that, they really don’t care about proper presentation, often citing different figures for the same thing at different places on the same product page, so yes, this really sucks). But if you want a 9.7 inch retina device, the Chinese Android devices are definitely indistinguishable from an iPad and much cheaper.

OK, so it liks like I was not up to date and the seem to be new devices now. The FNF iFive mini 3 in particular seems to be thinner than the iPad mini, if that 6.5 mm written on have something to do with thickness (I cannot read the text, unfortunately). The first merchant’s page on Aliexpress for this doesn’t list the dimensions at all, which is consistent with the complaints I uttered earlier. However, at $149, not that bad, and apparently pretty new, if at least the “Announced: 201308” from the merchant’s product page is accurate. However, as I said, devil is in the details, and here it lists only 4100mAh for the battery, which probably also leads to that sexy only 290g net weight. Other iPad mini clones have 4500 mAh, 4700 mAh, 5000 mAh or perhaps even more, but at the same time, they are not as lightweigt or thin. So, apparently, you still cannot have both at the moment.

According to Wikipedia, the iPad mini features a battery capacity of 16.5 Wh, so assuming a 3.7V LiPo battery for that Chinese thing, that would make 15.17 Wh or slightly less than the iPad mini. On the other hand, you’d get a thinner device (Wikipedia says, iPad mini is 7.2 mm thick). I guess, unless you’re happy to locked in to Apple’s ecosystem, you’d almost certainly get a better device with that Chinese clone, not to mention, a cheaper one, too.

Why doesn’t the world wait until it sees the Apple Whatever and then speak about it? Some folks are writing essays in the comment section about something that is not here yet. Then, again maybe that is the fun of it.